…make lemon butter!

My mother's lemon tree and her friendly neighbour have been abundantly kind with their offerings this year.

Lots and lots of lemons.

So we got together this week and made an enormous pot of silky smooth lemony custard.

It's very simple. You only need 4 ingredients.

Lemons. Sugar. Eggs. Butter.

With lots of lemons, we decided to triple the recipe. We used 21 lemons, 1.5kgs sugar, 21 eggs and 750g butter.

See those almost orange-coloured ones at the top left? They're from my mum's tree and are Maya lemons. They're just gorgeous. Quite sweet, and not as sharp as regular lemons.

So, if you want to make your own lemon butter, it's so, so simple.

You might want to only do 7 lemons, 7 eggs, 500g sugar and 250g butter though.

1. First, zest the lemons.

2. Then juice them.

If you're going to do a large batch, like we did (42 lemon halves!), an electric juicer will definitely save your poor wrists from exhaustion and RSI.

We got over a litre of juice out of all those lemons! Even using the electric juicer, my hands were aching.

3. Blend the eggs and juice together and put in a big pot.

4. Cut butter into cubes and add to lemon/egg mixture. Add sugar.

5. Set heat to low/med and basically stand there and stir until it thickens like custard. Don't rush it by turning up the heat, because it could curdle and look like scrambled eggs.

For a batch this size, I stood there stirring for quite a while. But it won't be very long for a single batch.

We ended up with 16 little jars to give away, and a couple of big ones for mum.

To prettify our efforts, we cut out circles from leftover fabric I've kept from quilting, cut out little cardboard gift tags from old folder dividers and tied them all up with white ribbons.

Aren't they just so sweet?

How adorable is this umbrella print?

So did it turn out alright?

Yep! It's not quite as thick as it usually is when mum's made it before (this is my first effort), but as she said, "not embarrassingly so". So, good enough to give away.

Lemon butter is just awesome on buttery English muffins, or normal toast (but I'm into muffins at the moment).

The recipe also says it's good for topping pavlovas, which sounds delicious. Will have to remember that when summer comes around and pavs are mandatory BBQ desserts.

Next time we're going to make a few single batches to see if tripling the recipe is what made it softer than usual.

But I think we're going to be making many, many more batches if we're going to use all the jars my mother's saved.

This is the cupboard in her garage where she hoards her jar addiction.

There's probably about 60 jars in there! Her reason for keeping them?

"For when I make lemon butter and give them away."

The problem is, our enormous batch barely made a dent in this stash. So, if you have an abundance of lemons at your place, but not an abundance of jars, you're welcome to some of my mum's.

I'll have to sneak them out of her garage, though. She's very attached to those jars, and keeps adding more. She won't let me throw any away…. I mean, recycle them.

I think I'm going to have to stage a jar hoarding intervention. And make her say, "My name is Mama K and I am a jar-aholic."

A lovely, yummy-preserve making, generous jar-aholic

xx Kiki

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